Monroe Doctrine (1823): America Warns Europe Off the Hemisphere

The Monroe Doctrine was a statement of American foreign policy set out by President James Monroe in his annual message to Congress on 2 December 1823. It declared that the Western Hemisphere was closed to new European colonisation and that European interference in the independent states of the Americas would be regarded as a threat to the United States. Little noticed in Europe at the time, it grew into one of the most cited principles in US history, reinterpreted repeatedly over the next two centuries.

Background: revolutions and monarchies

By the early 1820s most of Spain’s American empire had won or was winning independence. After the Congress of Vienna, however, the great conservative powers of Europe, especially Russia, Austria and Prussia, worked together to suppress revolutions. In 1823 a French army invaded Spain and restored King Ferdinand VII to absolute power.

Many in Washington and London feared that the next step would be a European expedition to help Spain recover its former colonies. The United States had recognised several of the new Latin American republics in 1822, beginning with Gran Colombia, and wanted them to stay independent and open to trade.

A second concern lay in the far northwest. In 1821 Tsar Alexander I issued a decree claiming the Pacific coast of North America down to the 51st parallel and banning foreign ships from nearby waters. The United States and Britain both rejected this claim.

The British offer and Adams’s objection

In August 1823 the British foreign secretary, George Canning, proposed to the American minister in London, Richard Rush, that the two countries jointly declare their opposition to any European intervention in Spanish America. Britain had strong commercial interests in the new republics.

Monroe consulted the former presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who both favoured accepting. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams disagreed. In a cabinet meeting in November 1823 he argued that it would be more dignified to state American principles openly than “to come in as a cock-boat in the wake of the British man-of-war”, as he recorded in his diary. Adams also suspected that a joint pledge might bind the United States not to acquire territory such as Cuba or Texas in the future.

Adams prevailed. The United States would act alone, even though everyone involved knew that the Royal Navy, not American power, was the real barrier to European expeditions across the Atlantic. In October 1823 France had in fact already assured Britain, in the Polignac Memorandum, that it had no plans to intervene in the Americas.

What the message said

The principles were scattered through Monroe’s long annual message rather than presented as a single doctrine. Three ideas stood out:

• Non-colonisation: the American continents were “henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers”.
• Non-intervention: any European attempt to extend its political system to the Western Hemisphere, or to oppress the independent states there, would be seen as dangerous to US peace and safety.
• Abstention: the United States would not interfere in Europe’s internal affairs or wars, nor with existing European colonies in the Americas.

Reception and early limits

European governments paid little attention. The Austrian chancellor Metternich and others regarded the message as presumptuous, and Latin American leaders found that Washington offered no alliances or practical help. Several new republics, including Colombia and Brazil, asked the United States for formal alliances in 1824-1825, and Washington declined each time.

When Simón Bolívar called a congress of American republics at Panama in 1826, President John Quincy Adams, by then in the White House, nominated two delegates. The proposal caused a long and bitter debate in Congress, partly because Southern members objected to dealing with states that had abolished slavery or recognised Haiti. One delegate died on the way and the other arrived after the congress had ended. The episode showed how far the United States was from acting as the leader of the hemisphere that the doctrine seemed to imagine.

In 1824 a Russo-American treaty settled the northwest dispute by setting the southern limit of Russian claims at 54°40’ north.

For decades the doctrine was more principle than policy. Britain occupied the Falkland Islands in 1833 without American objection. Britain and France intervened in the Río de la Plata in the 1840s. Most strikingly, while the United States was absorbed in its Civil War, France installed the Austrian archduke Maximilian as emperor of Mexico in 1864. After 1865 American diplomatic pressure, combined with Mexican resistance and French problems in Europe, led to the French withdrawal in 1867.

Later reinterpretations

The principles were revived by President James K. Polk in December 1845. Concerned about British and French interest in Texas, Oregon and California, Polk restated Monroe’s warning against European colonisation, applying it specifically to North America at a time when the United States itself was expanding rapidly westward. His version was used to support the annexation of Texas and claims to the Pacific coast.

As American power grew, the doctrine became more assertive. During a boundary dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana in 1895, Secretary of State Richard Olney told Britain that the United States was “practically sovereign on this continent”. The Spanish-American War of 1898 ended Spain’s rule in Cuba and Puerto Rico.

In 1902-1903 Britain, Germany and Italy blockaded Venezuela’s ports to force payment of debts owed to their citizens, shelling coastal forts in the process. The crisis was settled by arbitration, but it alarmed Washington. In December 1904 President Theodore Roosevelt announced what became known as the Roosevelt Corollary. To prevent European powers from using force to collect debts in the Caribbean, he said, the United States might itself exercise an “international police power” in cases of chronic wrongdoing. The corollary was used to justify US interventions in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nicaragua and elsewhere over the next three decades.

Opposition across Latin America led to a retreat. The Clark Memorandum, written in 1928 and published in 1930, separated the corollary from the original doctrine, and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy from 1933 renounced armed intervention. During the Cold War, American leaders again invoked the doctrine against Soviet influence in the hemisphere, notably during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Key people

• James Monroe (1758-1831): fifth president of the United States, who delivered the message and took responsibility for its policy.
• John Quincy Adams (1767-1848): Secretary of State and the doctrine’s chief architect; president from 1825 to 1829.
• George Canning (1770-1827): British foreign secretary whose proposal for a joint declaration prompted the American response.
• Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826): former president who advised Monroe to accept the British offer.
• Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919): president whose 1904 corollary turned the doctrine into a justification for intervention.

Timeline

• 1821, September: Russia’s decree claims the Pacific coast to the 51st parallel.
• 1822, June: The United States recognises Gran Colombia, the first of several Latin American states.
• 1823, April: French troops invade Spain to restore Ferdinand VII.
• 1823, August: George Canning proposes a joint Anglo-American declaration.
• 1823, November: Monroe’s cabinet debates the response; Adams argues for acting alone.
• 1823, 2 December: Monroe’s annual message sets out the doctrine.
• 1867: French forces leave Mexico after American pressure.
• 1904, 6 December: Theodore Roosevelt announces his corollary to the doctrine.
• 1933: Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaims the Good Neighbor Policy.

Why it matters

The Monroe Doctrine marked the first time the young United States claimed a special role in the whole Western Hemisphere. It began as a defensive warning to European monarchies at a moment when the country could not enforce it. Over time it became a flexible justification for American influence, and sometimes intervention, in Latin America, which is why it remains both celebrated and resented today.